


Of Paperclips and Finger Splints

by SabbyStarlight



Series: George Eads Appreciation Week 2021! [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Bromance, Gen, George Eads Appreciation Week, How many Texas feels can you fit into one fic without actually setting it IN Texas?, Hurt Mac, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, Whump, army days, sandbox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29842947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabbyStarlight/pseuds/SabbyStarlight
Summary: "What would you do without me?"  Jack asked, taking advantage of Mac's helmet still being off and ruffling a hand through blonde hair, sweaty and caked with dust.Mac ducked away from Jack's hand, laughing at the lighthearted teasing until he remembered the upcoming deadline of Jack's tour ending and his eyes darkened, protective walls quickly rebuilding faster than Jack could tear them down.  "A little over a week,"  He said, choosing his words carefully as he moved, increasing the space between them until he was practically leaning against his door.  "And I guess we'll find out."
Series: George Eads Appreciation Week 2021! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189058
Comments: 7
Kudos: 66





	Of Paperclips and Finger Splints

**Author's Note:**

> We're playing fast and loose with the prompt Out of the Box here. But this Army days fic is set right before Jack's tour is up, and he is facing the reality of leaving the sandBOX (and his favorite bomb nerd) so... yeah, let's just say it counts and get on with the fic.

Mac stumbled into the passenger seat of the humvee, opening the door before Jack had even rolled it to a complete stop in front of the abandoned building they had been sent out to.

"You good?" Jack asked, pulling off his sunglasses and peering across the vehicle, his Mac-senses telling him that his EOD Tech was anything but. Something more than the sunburn splashed across the bridge of his nose, visible even through the perpetual level of dust that seemed to cover every square inch of everything in the desert and the weight of exhaustion pulling on his shoulders beneath the pounds of gear.

"Fine," Mac's answer was more clipped than usual. It hadn't been a perfect partnership, even after they had moved past their admittedly rocky start, but there was... something... there. Something Jack hadn't been able to put a name to yet, or maybe he had the perfect name for it he just wasn't ready to admit it. Either way, the two of them had fallen into an easy camaraderie. They couldn't read each other’s minds, but they were pretty damn close being able to and while Mac wasn't the talker of the two of them, he was far from quiet and Jack had thought that they had left the one-word answers behind them a couple thousand klicks and two hundred eighty-four bombs ago.

"You sure?" He pressed on, driving one-handed so he could reach into the back, fingers grappling with the lid of the cooler before plunging into the barely cold water that had once been ice inside, searching for a bottle that was still sealed and handing it over to Mac. The younger man took it silently and didn't even smile or let out an annoyed huff when Jack flicked the water left on his hand directly onto Mac's face. "Cause you don't seem good. Somethin's off."

"I'm fine," Mac said again. Two syllables this time, not much progress, and he was attempting to balance the water bottle on his knee as the humvee bounced across the rough terrain instead of drinking from it as Jack had intended. He must have noticed Jack's worry-not that he was doing much to hide it-because a cautious glance to his left got Jack a few more words. "We get another called in? Or are we done for the day?"

"That was the last one," Jack assured, silently making the decision to not radio in and see if anything else had popped up since the last time they had made contact, hoping that maybe Mac was just tired. The relieved sigh and the way he sagged into his seat at the premise of being finished with another day certainly backed up that theory. "Long day, huh?"

"Can we just get back to base?" Mac snapped, eyes locked firmly out his window, water bottle abandoned on the seat beside him, unopened. "Without the play-by-play?"

Mac's level of snark had been one of the first things Jack had needed to grow accustomed to, which was easier said than done when it was directed towards him, but the kid only gave as good as he got. Sure Jack teased him about being sassy, but it usually wasn't unprovoked, if Jack was being honest. And being raised by his grandfather had left Mac as respectful as they came. That response, with no reason behind it, was enough to have Jack pulling over to the side of the road and slamming into park, sending a plume of dust up behind them. "We ain't moving until you tell me what's wrong," He said, trying to keep his frustration and worry from bleeding too much into his voice, knowing that the quickest way to get Mac to shut him out even more was with a direct order. "So this'll go a whole lot faster if you start talkin'."

Mac refused to look at him, still staring out his window as if there was something more than seemingly endless miles of sand between them and their destination. "You said it yourself. It's been a long day, Jack. Let's just get back. Please."

"Give me an answer," Jack shrugged, making it perfectly clear that whatever happened next, how long they were stuck waiting, was up to Mac. "An honest one. And we'll go."

Mac sighed, defeated, and reached up to unclip his helmet, letting it drop unceremoniously onto his knee and fiddling with the straps for a moment before giving in and holding up his other hand, the one that had stayed tucked away next to his door and out of Jack's sight. The last two fingers were bruised and bent at an angle that made Jack's own hand pulse sharply in sympathy. "It's no big deal," Mac hurried to assure, trying to stop what was sure to be an impending lecture in its tracks. "I wasn't going to bother anyone and mention it. Wasn't going to waste anyone's time. I just wanted to get back to base so I could wrap them up. It... it kinda hurts."

"Yeah, I bet it does," Jack agreed softly. "I don't know what all that nonsense was about you not wantin' to tell anyone though. Wasting people's time. You're supposed to tell me when you get hurt, kid. Thought that was part of our deal, you and me."

Mac shrugged a single shoulder, still not allowing himself to meet Jack's eyes. "I will. If it's ever something worth mentioning. This isn't important."

"Buddy, it's your hands," Jack shook his head sadly. “On the list of things that matter out here, that's gotta be at least a top-three thing. Right below that mind of yours and my shooting skills. Hell, maybe more important than me bein' able to pull a trigger. Anyone can do that, what everybody can't do is what those hands of yours can. You gotta tell me these things. You don't have to deal with them on your own. Were you even going to go get checked out? Stop by the infirmary?"

Mac's silence was the only answer Jack needed.

"Of course you weren't," Jack sighed. "You really thought you were going to be able to hide this from me?"

"No. I thought... I thought that as long as it didn't keep me from being able to do my job you wouldn't care."

Jack knew the kid's home life hadn't been the best, but occasionally over the course of their time working together he would say things like that and they never failed to make Jack want to wrap him up and haul him back to Texas and give him a fresh start with people who actually gave a damn about him. "Mac," he began, and the use of his preferred name, not his given one or one of the seemingly endless nicknames Jack always used instead, had the younger man finally looking at him. "If it hurts you, I need to know. I ain't worried about you not being able to do your job, I worry about you. Cause that's my job. You hear me?"

"I hear you," Mac ducked his head. "Sorry."

"That's alright," Jack waved the apology off, not feeling entirely deserving of it since he had let his charge get hurt in the first place. "You'll tell me next time."

Mac's jaw twitched, a non-verbal answer that wasn't the response Jack was hoping for, but at least the kid hadn't outright lied to him.

"You wanna let me check it out?" Jack offered, changing tactics. "I've probably taken more first aid and field med courses in my time than you have years under your belt."

"You realize you just called yourself old, right?" Mac asked with a smirk, which had been Jack's intention all along, bringing Mac's sass back and aiming it at a proper target. "You can't even blame this one on me. You brought it all on yourself, old man."

"Yeah, yeah," Jack bit back a smile. "Stop ignoring the question."

The spark faded from Mac's eyes as quickly as it appeared. "Really, Jack, it's fine. I can wrap them up when we get back and-"

"Huh-uh," Jack shook his head. "Nope. That ain't an option."

"I don’t even think they’re broken," Mac tried again, walking the always fine line between explaining his side of a discussion and starting an argument between him and his overwatch. "Maybe just a fracture or two. I don't want to bother the medical staff with it."

"And I totally get that," Jack agreed. "Even though that's what they're there for. It's your call, kid. Me or them. But this ain't somethin' you get to handle on your own."

Mac still wavered, debating digging in his heels and putting up a fight.

"At least let me just check it out?" Jack offered, changing tactics and holding out his own hand, steady and nonthreatening. "See what we’re dealin’ with? And if you don’t want me to do anything more than that, I won’t. I’m not gonna hurt ya, kiddo."

"I know that," Mac hesitated. "It's just..."

"If you say it ain't my job, right after we had that talk about how anything regarding keeping you safe most definitely is my job, I'm gonna take back that offer to not hurt you," Jack teased. It was a risky play, making a lighthearted threat like that, even as a joke. One he knew would result in Mac either giving in and accepting help or shutting down completely, but he was running out of options and the late evening sky was running out of sunlight.

With a defeated sigh and a quickly-masked grin, Mac shifted sideways in his seat so he could reach his injured hand over to Jack.

"Thank you," Jack said, letting as much sincerity flow into the two words as he could. The impact of the gesture, that Mac was willing to not only let Jack help him but to put himself in such a vulnerable position and to trust him with something as important as his hands, wasn't lost on Jack. "If you want me to stop, just say the word and I will, okay?"

"It's fine," Mac nodded, watching as Jack carefully traced the newly crooked line of his pinky finger with his own thumb. "I- I trust you."

"You really went and did a number on 'em, huh?" Jack asked, unable to completely mask the smile at having finally broken through one of Mac's many walls.

"Yeah," Mac agreed. "It's worse now that I stopped. Which is dumb, it should hurt less since I'm not moving them now but-"

"Naw, makes perfect sense. You had a job to do, so you focused on that instead of the pain. And now that's the only thing pullin' your focus," Jack explained. "Though they'll probably feel a little bit better if you'd let me splint them, I could probably whip somethin' up here real quick. If you want."

"Really?"

"You ain't the only one who can improvise," Jack teased, setting Mac's hand down long enough to pry open one of the velcro pockets on his vest and pull out a roll of black electrical tape. "It might not be pretty, but it'll get the job done. Just need somethin' sturdy enough to brace them with now."

"Something metal," Mac supplied, looking around the humvee cab, searching for anything that could work without having to pry apart the dash. He had quickly learned not to do that. "Lightweight steel, preferably."

"Oh!" Jack's eyes lit up with an idea. "I got just the thing." His hand disappeared into another pocket of his vest and returned with a fist full of paperclips. He proudly dropped them with a clang on top of the radio hub between the two of them.

Mac's puzzled frown was nowhere close to the smile Jack had been hoping for. "What... why do you have all of those?"

"For you," Jack shrugged nonchalantly, wondering if revealing his stash had been a bad move. Maybe Mac wasn't ready to know that Jack had caught on to the way any time a stack of forms made its way into the barracks they were always unbound when someone came by to pick them back up and how on too many nights when Mac couldn't sleep Jack could always count on finding him practically falling out of his bunk in order to have enough moonlight to see to twist the little strands of metal into various shapes and patterns. Jack had lifted a whole box the last time he had been called into his superior's office for yet another lecture on his apparently vague understanding of the rules he was expected to follow until his tour was up. He had thought it was a good idea at the time, having them ready to break out whenever the kid needed something to keep his hands busy. And it was certainly better than him reassembling Jack's gear. But once it was no longer a secret he found himself wondering if it had been the wrong thing to do. The last thing he wanted was to embarrass the kid.

A quick glance up to Mac's eyes, waiting for a nod of consent before he began, Jack lined up one of the paperclips against Mac's knuckle and began wrapping the tape around it. "Not _for_ _you_ , for you," He backtracked as he worked. "Just, since you're always askin' for random stuff. You know, doin' what you do. I've started keepin' all kinds of junk. Never know when you're gonna need a bottle cap or a roll of film or a light bulb. Or a paper clip."

"Oh," Mac's sigh of relief wasn't quite as hidden as he had hoped. "Thanks, I guess. Ouch," The moment was cut off with a hiss of pain and a flinch as Jack began straightening his finger, bracing it against another paper clip. He didn't pull his hand completely out of Jack's grasp, though, and Jack chose not to dwell on what that move-or lack of- meant in regards to the trust the kid had in him.

"Sorry," Mac ducked his head in what Jack sincerely hoped wasn't shame but looked an awful lot like it. "You can keep going, I-I'll stay still."

"It's alright," Jack was quick to reassure as he began again. "I know this hurts. I've been there."

"Yeah?"

" 'Course. Got my hand a little too close to the auger of the hay baler one summer when me and my cousin Nick were goofin' off while we were supposed to be loadin' bales into the back of the truck."

"You got your hand stuck in a hay baler?" Mac asked, eyebrows shooting up his forehead in a combination of horror and amazement.

"Well, now," Jack grinned as he added a final paperclip to the first finger. "It's not like it was running or anything. Tractor was stopped, we were eatin' lunch. But I bumped into it pretty hard. Had a bruise for like, two whole days and everything."

Mac was still laughing when Jack moved on to working on the splint for the next finger.

"What happened here, anyway?" Jack asked, realizing that keeping Mac engaged in a conversation, even if it was a wildly elaborated tale of his own worked wonders to distract from the pain he was causing. "How'd you manage to do this?"

"Not too different from your story, actually," Mac admitted. "The first one, at least. I didn't realize I hadn't disconnected the manual detonation when I unhooked the explosives," Mac winced as Jack slowly straightened his finger into place, but kept talking. "Got caught in the gear system whoever built it had rigged up."

"Ah, that would do it," Jack nodded in sympathy.

"For the record?" Mac smirked. "I really don't recommend trying it."

"Tell you what, you stick to dealin' with the bombs and I'll be there to patch you up the next time one of 'em decides to bite back," Jack said. "That sound alright to you? Cause, check for yourself, but I think I do a pretty okay job of it."

"You're done?" Mac perked up significantly at that, surprised gaze dropping back down to his hand, still carefully held in Jack's.

"Just about," Jack wound one final loop of tape around Mac's finger for good measure and then unwound a larger strip of tape, tearing it off the roll with his teeth and using it to secure both of the splinted fingers to his uninjured middle finger. "That feel okay?"

"Yeah, actually," Mac smiled, pulling his hand back and slowly curling the fingers he still had mobility of. "It does. Thanks."

"What would you do without me?" Jack asked, taking advantage of Mac's helmet still being off and ruffling a hand through blonde hair, sweaty and caked with dust.

Mac ducked away from Jack's hand, laughing at the lighthearted teasing until he remembered the upcoming deadline of Jack's tour ending and his eyes darkened, protective walls quickly rebuilding faster than Jack could tear them down. "A little over a week," He said, choosing his words carefully as he moved, increasing the space between them until he was practically leaning against his door. "And I guess we'll find out."

"Right, yeah," Jack agreed, locking his gaze on the desert in front of them as he shifted the humvee back into drive and resumed their trek back to base. "When my tour's up." For the first time, the countdown of dwindling days left before he shipped out wasn't met with excitement.

"Back to Texas," Mac offered, picking up on the anxiousness that had suddenly taken root in Jack's chest at the mention of going home. Of leaving Mac behind. "Come on, man, you've been looking forward to that for months. Before I even met you. You gotta be more excited about it than that."

"Of course I am, yeah," Jack forced a smile, keeping his eyes locked on the road ahead of them even though there was nothing to see for miles. "Can't wait to see everyone. I got a niece over there I ain't ever met yet. Gonna drink a couple'a gallons of Mama's sweet tea and sleep in an actual bed and get the top down on the GTO and take her for a spin."

"I'm sure you're not the only one counting down the days. They're probably just as excited to have you home. as you are to get back."

And there it was. That was the problem. The piece of his world that had shifted without him even realizing it. Texas didn't feel like home. Not anymore. Jack's eyes jerked over to look at the younger man sitting across from him who had, against Jack's best intentions gone from being a responsibility to a friend to something more. A brother, not just in arms, and with every day that passed Jack was finding it more and more difficult to imagine what life was going to be like without Mac at his side. Against his will, home had become a person, not a place, and he had figured that out just in time to have to pack up and leave again.

Only this time, he didn't know if he was strong enough to do it.


End file.
